Malaphor of the Year (2017): Welcome to My Shoes

2017 was a banner year for malaphors, found especially in the political world. The political talk shows were a particularly fertile field for mining malaphors.

Coming up with this year’s winner was difficult, given the many excellent conflations. Who could forget dead as a cucumber (September 23), a Chris Matthews doozy? And then there was Donald Trump, who said many malaphors over the past year. I chose for a finalist it is finally sinking through (October 24) as it was part of one of his tweets.

Shit or get out of the kitchen (postedAugust 26) was a particularly good one, and conjured up unpleasant images.

But the best malaphor this year has to be welcome to my shoes (January 2), which happened to be the first malaphor posted in 2017. It is a beautiful congruent conflation of “welcome to my world” and “walk a mile in (someone’s) shoes”, both meaning to consider another person’s perspective or experiences.

Fourth place – Dead as a cucumber

Third place – It is finally sinking through

Second place – Shit or get out of the kitchen

First place – Welcome to my shoes

Thanks to all who submitted malaphors this year and for following this blog. Happy New Year to all and happy malaphor hunting in 2018!